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GHS Connect #21 Monday 4th March

Mia's notes

We are aware that there have been some issues with Years 8 and 9 over the last few weeks. Assemblies were delivered last week and we will be continuing to work with these year groups in a variety of ways. 

Please do take a note of the focus on the following actions we will be taking on break / lunch and truancy in Lou’s section below which will begin next week. Please support us in improving behaviour around the site with prioritising meet and greet and end and send, which will really improve things in corridors.

Many thanks for everyone’s support.

Thanks for all of the work with Year 13 and 12. Year 13 data is looking brilliant and Year 12 parents’ evening went really well.

Have a good week everyone,

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Department Time - 3.15pm - 4.30pm

Wednesday
Briefing 8.15am in the library.
HODs and HOYs/DHOYs meetings 3.15pm - 4.15pm.
Teacher marking, planning and collaboration directed time 3.15pm - 4.15pm.

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 7 Interim 2 due

Year 8/Year 9 at break and lunch and Truancy

Starting this week, we are going to be doing a couple of things differently around Year 8 and Year 9 at lunchtime and students truanting from lessons:

Break and lunch – if Year 8 and Year 9 students are being silly and/or unsafe at break and lunch, they will be removed from break and lunch for the following week to work with SLT and the Year Teams. Families will be informed of their behaviour, and they will only return to circulation once they have shown that they are ready to go back out. Sandwiches will be supplied for those out of circulation.

Truancy - if students are not going to their lessons, they will be taken by a senior member of staff or a member of their Year Team and kept out of circulation for the rest of that session. They will get an IE day and we will phone parents. If they truant again during the day, they will then get a suspension. And, if they walk away from staff at any point, they will also get a suspension. This will apply to students in all year groups, not just Year 8 and 9.

Year 8 and Year 9 have had assemblies about this, and have been shown slides during tutor time, so are aware of the changes. And, key families have been phoned about the above.

Thank you to everyone for your support with this!

Lou

Learning and teaching: Embedding Excellence

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently...  

Tips to support PP students with exams

We have 98 pupil premium students in Year 11 and (although the funding route is different in post-16), 45 pupil premium students in Year 13. 

Here are our Year 11 Cohort

There are many reasons why some of the pupil premium students in Year 11 and Year 13 at our school underachieve. Barriers could be: chaotic home lives, attendance, low reading ages, ingrained bad learning habits, no motivation, poor engagement and behaviour in the classroom, an inability to work independently, overcrowding at home so no quiet space for revision, inadequate resources, a lack of academic role models or being unable to visualise future goals. At this point in the year, you know what barriers the students in your class face for your subject. (All research suggests high quality teaching is the most powerful way to support PP students).  Therefore, you are their biggest resource. Over the next 9 weeks, you will help them navigate revision of content and exam skills so that they can be successful. 

What does this look like?

Marc Rowland (Pupil Premium Guru) suggests:

Linked is the article where he outlines what these mean.

Clare Green, (writer of the blog The Sixth Form Slant) suggests that a message of reassurance, meeting the sixth formers where they are, maintaining routines and consistency of communication is vital to support our young people.

My advice is simple. In this final push, students need us to be clear about their revision tasks, and they need us to start the revision process in class so that they feel confident to complete it independently. 

How?

• Give students the physical resources to complete the revision task exactly as you require.
• Set revision tasks at the start of a lesson.
• Partially complete revision tasks together using the visualiser.
• Add specific links on Google Classroom to online resources that they can use to complete the task effectively.

Please let me know if any PP or bursary students in Year 11 or Year 13 need resources to revise. Remember, we are pupil premium students’ greatest levelers of their disadvantage.

Jess

Inclusion Updates 

CP Update

Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention Training - Harmless - Sharing some online training from Andrew Hall.   

It is a sad truism that human responses to emotional triggers can sometimes produce undesirable outcomes. Chief of these are suicide and self-harm. Existing on the far end of a human response spectrum, they are the outcomes we all wish to avoid among emotionally affected persons. Unfortunately, children and young people, especially in secondary education are highly vulnerable to these issues. As an educational professional, being confronted with self-harm or the potential of suicide among pupils can be a difficult prospect. The Harmless Organisation, is dedicated to providing training in these matters, to better prepare professionals for these occurrences. If interested please follow the link here 

SEN - Do Now Idea 

This week why not try a starter activity using the following website, Puzzlemaker.  It's quick and easy to set up. You can generate a word search, crossword as an example to reinforce key terminology in a lesson and support our students with speech, language and communication needs.  

Inclusion Heroes

I would like to say a huge thank you to Fay, Christie, Monika and Naz for all their incredible work ploughing through exams access paperwork 

Thank you for all your continued support.

Gurvinder

Character Champions Hot Chocolate

Every week, four students - nominated by departments - will be celebrated for displaying excellent character in their lesson. This week, students celebrated with postcards and hot chocolate with Mia. 

The following students were rewarded and they, in turn, wanted to celebrate certain members of staff at GHS. (Comments are in their own words.)

Khalid Khlief 8G1
Nominated Mr Merchant: “...helped me so much to improve my English.” 

Samira Dirir 11M3
Nominated Ms Stevens: “...so supportive since she’s been introduced as our teacher. She is a great teacher who sacrifices her mornings to help us revise.” 

Muhammad Javed 8M1
Nominated Mr Moors: “I hated P.E in Y6/Y7. However, you found a way to make it fun.” 

Tanvi Sharma 11T1
Nominated Ms Bharadva: “She’s very honest and I feel like I can speak to her about anything and not just psychology.”